First of all sorry if this is not the correct place to post my question.
I am wondering to know if the WH-1000XM3 sounds OK with the ANC off. My question is because I need a headphones for watching movie at home by Netflix (so latency is not an issue) and eventually to listen some musing. Since I will use mainly on home the ANC is not a dealbraker but I live in Argentina and is not easy to find headphones at a competitive price. The Sony Wh-1000xm3 has a price of US250 but for example a Bose QC35 ii has a price of 600usd just as the PCX 550 ii.
So, at this point Sony is the only alternative but I don’t want to buy something that will sound like crap with the ANC off.
The ANC being off or on doesn’t really change the sound much on the XM3. The main thing to watch for is not to plug in the audio cable. This changes the sound a lot.
I can confirm @Pelontar’s observation. The XM3’s sound changes very little, if at all, with specifically ANC on or off. You will notice a bad change in sound if you leave the XM3 completely powered off and drive it passively through a wired connection. It really needs to be powered on because ANC or not, there is lots of DSP going on to make it sound right.
Hey I’m really enjoying listening to these cans casually, good details for consumer, very pleased with the listen, anc on and off. Bass is natural with good presence. Can be boomy, but damn can’t fault my uncle for grabbing these.
ANC does some odd stuff for audio in the bass but I only notice it at low volumes, and sometimes when slowly removing them while they are playing which I think drives the ANC nuts for a second.
Wavelet’s EQ preset and adding back just a wee bit of bass cleaned this up a lot, I enjoy them for casual meandering around doing stuff with tunes.
I have these as well. I agree with sound being similar and on or off, but I don’t do much critical listening with them. Didn’t like the stock sound, but they have EQed to an acceptable state. Can’t beat that ANC though. Almost magical the first time I tried it. Way better than any others I have tried (but that’s limited to the Sony TWS and some cheapo ANC sets).
Mine are pretty much off or wide open, certainly not audiophile but I sure enjoy the fun-ness and convenience once I EQ’d them into sanity. They were also like 200 bucks new, I’d be less pleased at retail. I end up using them as much or more than my “real” headphone and amp stuff tbh.
I went so far as to buy a Fiio bta30 that I feed out of my D10S so I can have LDAC streaming from my PC and greater range. I haven’t tried it’s USB interface to see if the track skip/pause works, but the volume control does. Optical out of my DAC to the FiiO.
